Autumn always reminds me of the cycles of life. The cold air setting in makes my morning walks brisk. Autumn is also that last blaze of glory before winter calls us inward. Days are shorter and the squirrels are gathering pine cones and acorns, we have a regular, daily visitor to our garden and bird swing collecting and gathering for his/her storage.
Nature knows how to take care of itself, how to provide, how to shelter, how to grow, how to adapt, how to die and be reborn. Everything is connected. Everything ebbs and flows, and change is the only constant. Spend enough time in Nature and you notice how alive even a blade of grass is.
Last night was the stunning Hunters Moon which was especially big and bright. It was lovely to gaze at it last night and I woke early with it this morning. The forecast was good for the weather so I grabbed the opportunity to get outside down to the beach with my flask, journal and oracle cards. This was 6.30 this morning and I got to the beach for 7am. It was weird to walk with the moon and dark on my right side and the daylight coming up on my left. It was lovely to watch the sunrise and was surprisingly warm.
For an hour I sat there and journaled, drank my coffee and watched the sun come up. I certainly went through some emotional and monumental thoughts with the energy of the moon and sun.
Moon Focus:
Injecting new life into projects
Taking bold steps forward
Pouring love into the things that make you happy.
This has certainly come up for me over the last 24 hours and one word that has kept popping up for me ‘BEGIN’ This word means a lot to me and will be my word for 2025. We have some goals coming together next year and it is all about crone years, next chapter, beginning of a new way of life, a new way of working, adventures and so much more.
This morning just makes me realise how lucky and blessed I am to where I live and my life. I do miss the mountains and rugged coastline but to be sat on the beach next to a flat coastline is just as special.
I watched the sun come up onto a very clear blue sky day and thanked the Universe for giving me the opportunity to experience this morning.
Today Saturday 21st September 2024 marks a powerful period of balance between light and dark, as we transition from the outward energy of summer to the cozy, introspective vibes of fall. Practically, it’s time to slow down, focus inward, and prepare our homes (and ourselves) for the reflective months ahead. Energetically, the equinox invites us to release what no longer serves us—letting go of old patterns and stale energy—so we can welcome new intentions and greater alignment. 🌿✨
Syncing with the natural cycles helps create a harmonious environment that supports personal growth and brings peace and balance into our lives. Here are a few practical and energetic tips to help you make the most of this seasonal shift:
Space Clearing Ritual: Clear stagnant energy with sage, sound, or open windows to release old patterns and welcome fresh energy for the Autumn season. 🍃
Realign for Slowing Down: Shift key areas of your home to create a cozy, reflective environment that supports rest and introspection during the slower Autumn season. 🏡✨
Ground Your Space with Seasonal Elements: Add natural Autumn decor like pumpkins, plants, and Smoky Quartz to ground and balance your space. 🎃🌱
Create a Gratitude Corner: Set up a small altar with meaningful items to focus on gratitude and invite abundance into your life. 🙏💫
Grounding Sounds or a Autumn Playlist: Play grounding music like tribal drumming or create a fall playlist of your favorite soulful songs to help settle your energy. 🥁🎶
Wishing you all a beautiful, balanced, and abundant Autumn season! 🍁🍂
So, I thought I would share with you something important about Aromatherapy and therapists. Aromatherapy is so popular now and there are some misconceptions about the qualifications and classifications about this therapy.
In fact, since I started teaching this subject it is something I can be rather pedantic about and will stand on my soap box!
The difference in qualifications and categories.
Essential Oil Practitioner, Aromatherapist and Clinical Aromatherapist.
When you train as a massage therapist you are sometimes trained to use pre-blended oils to give an ‘aromatherapy massage’. This is when you are only taught (and insured!) to give a massage with massage oils that are already pre-blended by the supply company. You are not trained or qualified to use essential oils at all. I run a course ‘Essential, Blends and Products and in this I do teach about Essential Oils, Blended Oils and making products. In the Recipe Book there are recipes for essential oil blends that can be used by the therapist. This does not make them an Aromatherapist, they are still Massage Therapist with training on using Essential Oils and Blends and only using the Recipes provided. They are not trained to put their own Essential Oils together.
An Aromatherapist has done a full level 3 or 4 qualification in the use of essential oils including all safety and contraindications. They are trained to mix and blend oils for massage and other products for home use. They are usually trained in 40-60 essential oils and basic common ailments they can support.
At this level to be an Aromatherapist in the UK it includes a massage element. 20 years ago, I trained in this qualification and Level 4 was then classed as an Advanced Aromatherapy. Aromatherapy Massage is very different to Swedish Massage. Much gentler, smoother, and lighter.
If you train to this level without the massage element you are a qualified Essential Oil Practitioner. Some people prefer to train this way and simply add Essential Oils to their already existing treatments such as reflexology or even counselling.
A Clinical Aromatherapist has continued training even up to a level 7. They are trained in over 150 oils and much more complex conditions and uses of the essential oils. Clinical Aromatherapists can safely work with many medical conditions such as cancer symptoms and even as young as newborns if need be. It is the equivalent of having a bachelors degree in aromatherapy. (Though degrees don’t exist in this field)
I read a good description and analogy this week –
Pre-Blend training is like going to the nurse practitioner.
Aromatherapy or Aromatherapist training is like going to the GP.
Clinical Aromatherapist is like going to a Consultant at a hospital
Please when looking for an Aromatherapist do check their qualifications, training and even their insurance to make sure that you are getting the right therapy for you, the right therapy you want and that the therapist is trained properly. Educate yourself first!
It is that time of the year to pick Elderflowers and make cordial.
I thought it was early!
I must admit, I noticed on my way back to West Sussex from North Devon (I made a quick pit stop to Glastonbury) at the beginning of May that Elderflowers were already flowering (I noticed in the car park!) I thought that was early, but the weather has been good for them.
Over the weekend I went out to pick a few towards my ingredients for the cordial along with water, sugar and citric acid.
At this time of the year, the hedgerows all around us are bursting with freshly blossoming elderflowers.
Legend
Arguably the most important, revered, spiritually charged and clinically important herbal medicine in British herbal history, the famed elder was known as “the medicine chest of the country people” since written records began. The Anglo Saxon name for the elder tree was “aeld” (from which “elder” derives itself), which means fire. This is because the stems of the elder are hollow and they were used to blow air through to help start cooking fires, much like bellows. The elder tree has immense legend and myth surrounding it. It was believed in Anglo Saxon England that if you burned elder wood you would see the Devil, but if you planted elder by your house it would keep the Devil away. It is also known as the ‘Judas tree’ as Judas Iscariot is said to have hanged himself from an elder tree after handing over Jesus to be executed. On that note, the Church stated that the cross used to crucify Jesus Christ was made from the elder tree and thus was “evil.”
Identify
The tree itself is easy to identify as the leaves often appear as the greenest leaves in the hedgerow. They have a brightness and illumination about them that is quite unique. They are lightly serrated, spear shaped and around 5- 10cms long and around 3-5cms wide. They grow in opposing pairs. The bark of the tree is a greyish brown and is often gnarly in appearance. The flowers begin to blossom as early as May and appear as clusters (that look like umbrellas in shape) of very small (less than 5mm in diameter) white blossoms that each have five petals. A tell-tale sign of the elder flower is its unique odour which can be strong and slightly overpowering if it is a hot sunny day.
I have been quite reflective of all that has passed & all that is coming. Of all that I have been and all that I am becoming. And how each moment is made up of choices and how each day we can choose how we wish to live.
I was called to my “I choose” list from this time last year. And was taken with how what I choose is still the same, yet the landscape around me has shifted over the course of a year living within those choices.
This is what I intentionally choose..
I choose love. I choose to treat everyone & everything with kindness, support & grace, as best I can.
I choose to receive. To choose to open my heart to all that is for me.
I choose the seasons. I choose to live with the wheel of life of what each turning of the wheel brings. To work with the flow of Mother Nature & to lean into all she has to teach us about ourselves.
I choose nature. I choose a path of living and working with the trees, the herbs, the hills, the stones, the rivers & the seas – becoming a herbal therapist.
I choose my home. I choose to create a cosy, colourful & calm sanctuary for me, for my family & for the woman I support.
I choose responsibility. I choose to make good choices for myself, for those I love, and for my local community.
I choose expansion. I choose to grow, to receive all that I need & to give all that I can.
I choose my gift. I choose to share my witchy/wild self, my knowledge, my experience and my wisdom to help women heal and grow.
I choose all this. Everyday.
I choose this even on the days it doesn’t make sense or I am on my knees with tiredness, frustration or fear. And on the days that I don’t, I am kind to myself & come back to it the next day.
As we head towards March and the doing part of the year, I invite you to create your own “I Choose” list.
It’s a beautiful way to consider what you believe in, what feels good & underpin the decisions you make everyday to create a life that feels good for you.
I was inspired to write this from all your lovely comments of comfort and support you have given me losing my lovely Mum.
This has been a couple of weeks of major loses in the world. I am not alone.
I feel like I am slowly coming back to myself. Things have shifted and changed me forever.
A winter where within the fragments, I felt my whole self. A Winter where I have felt my ancestors around me. A winter where my heart held my sons, my brother and my family. A winter of meeting my true strength, of meeting my true self. A winter of meeting the knowledge that I can choose how I meet all my life’s experiences.
A winter where I wrote a new story. One that started with the acceptance of turning 60. One of trust, grace and open-ness. I love how we can choose how we live our story. Even in the hardest, darkest and grief-iest moments.
And I love how we can write our story as we emerge from the rest filled and reflective months of Winter into the Spring months of new awakenings. I have my dreams and plans for this year. As Spring comes forth, so there will be my reawakening – my office makeover, my changes to my life and health. What is your winter to spring story?
This is a beautiful way to connect your winter and spring together… in the knowing that you too can create your story. 1. Gather pen and paper. 2. Create a quiet place for you to just be 3. Write down twenty words that come to you with how you feel in Winter 4. Is there anything you can change? 5. Is there anything you can do more?
Visually the bare branches, the leafy floors look still and lifeless, but there is activity underneath. The trees use their withdrawn energy for growth, for expanding their root systems. All in preparation for the growing season, and it’s already started.
I love how what we can learn from the wintering of trees and use this time to prepare our own root systems, to use this as a time of self discovery. A time of progression. A time to loosen up the blinkeredness of certain ways or engrained patterns.
Winter is connected to our root chakra, the base of the spine. The grounding element is related to earth energy and our feelings of safety, it’s about our foundations & creating security for our emotional & physical wellbeing.
Survival instinct, self-preservation, courage, grounding, material stability, vitality, passion, the power to create.
The Root Chakra is about your physical needs such as feeling worthy to take up space, capable of having your needs met & strong enough to face life.
A blocked Base Chakra would feel like living in fear, indecision, lack of vitality, difficulty manifesting creative ideas.
An open & balanced base chakra allows you to feel more grounded, focused, organised, abundant & in your body.
Ask yourself…
What can you do to treat yourself with more compassion?
How can you become more purposeful in what you do?
How can you live more from the heart?
How can you inspire others?
The Winter energy is the realm of the crone.
The stirrer of the cauldron. The woman within us that lives life in full. The woman who is unafraid to speak her truth. She has lived, she has loved and she has lost. She walked through life and gained her experiences.
It’s been over 20 years since I launched Ali’s Holistic Healing Hands and if you told me then all the things I would do and achieve in that time I would be shocked and say to you not a chance! lol
I have learned many things and taken different paths, but my love and passion has always been and always will be with holistic therapies.
It is almost like I have come full circle. I first came into this industry by being introduced to Aromatherapy and Essential Oils plus herbs. They supported me with my eczema after struggling for 14 years with the condition on my hands. I am happy to say I have been eczema free for over 25 years now, with no flare ups and I do hope it stays that way. I am thankful that holistic/complementary therapies came into my life.
In 2012 after many years of running my therapy business and many therapists asking me how I kept going and what I did for marketing etc, I ran a workshop on running a therapy business for therapists. It proved successful and gave me the stepping stone to set up and launch Ali’s Therapy Academy I still continue to run this business to this day helping and supporting therapists to run their therapy business.
I can done lots of training over the years in adding skills to my therapies and in business knowledge. I have made many contacts and friends in my business from clients and business contacts. I have great support around me including my family.
I semi-retired my therapies last year in 2021 and refocused Ali’s Holistics in to therapy training school. Through the Pandemic I finally followed up on my interest in herbs and herbal medicine and through the 2 years I learned about Foraging, Infused Oils, Growing Herbs and Herbal First Aid. From that, followed training in Herbal Medicine (which I still have to complete) and my 10 year dream was taking shape.
My hubby and I have a dream when retiring of moving to the countryside of Devon, Cornwall or Wales, having a bit of land so I can set up my cabin and run my Academy, Training and Apothecary from there. I have pictured in my head and on my vision board a whole wall covered in shelves with jars and bottles filled with herbs. So towards the end of last year I decided to bring part of my 10 years vision forward and started creating Ali’s Apothecary.
This new business is about being more of me – letting my inner witch out!
I am excited of what I am creating and I do hope that you will too. I envisage a lot more of aromatherapy clinical blends and products, herbal products, natural facials, facial products, videos, workshops, webinars, walks, foraging, remedies, subscription boxes and much more.
This will not all happen at once, it will take time. Therapies are just the start of things to come.
Welcome to Ali’s Apothecary and thank you for reading.
